ARRRGH No Time!!!

For anyone that takes on a challenge the main difficulty I'm sure is always TIME to train.

Ideally a training plan consists of blocks of work - usually 3/4/5 week blocks depending on what you prefer, and each week from week one to the penultimate week gets slightly harder (usually not more than 10% harder in duration or intensity) with an easy-ish recovery week at the end. (adaptation - where your body absorbs the work you have previously put in)

This is called periodisation - and it's so important. It means that progress is linear. It allows for enough rest and recuperation to mean injuries are less likely (within each week there should also be 'rest days'), and it means that mentally you don't burn out or get fed up, because you can see progress - but it isn't full on hard training 24/7. No one can go full gas day in and day out.

Anyway - I never follow a plan, but my natural discipline when I've got a challenge in my head is to naturally do this. I like things that are intuitive (in line with how the brain or body naturally work) and if you train on 'feel' which I do, then a body of work will look like periodisation. You'll work hard, and for a period of time you'll feel great, and in the zone, and be able to work hard, push further, faster - until you can't. You'll get tired, and if you listen to your body and take the rest required - when you feel ready to get back at it, you'll start the next block of training slightly stronger than you started the last. Which is the whole point!

My riding currently is best described as sporadic. One week I'll do one or two sessions, the next week nothing. I'm better than most getting to a reasonable level on very little specific training. I don't know why, I just seem to cling onto a base level of fitness. Probably diet, thinking about weight, core strength, and when I can't ride, still swimming or running which are easier to fit in. So even when I'm not specifically doing the thing I'm training for, I'm not doing NOTHING. I also wonder if years and years and years of football, and training, mean that it's just all sat in there somewhere to kind of call on. So that a proper training effort means you are just dialling it back in. There is no evidence this is possible, or not that I've ever read, but I do feel like there is something to that.

Anyway the chart below shows how I'm riding in terms of frequency.

The next chart just to illustrate periodisation has last years riding overlaid onto this years (the blue line), and even when I wasn't training for anything, you can see that I was naturally listening to my body (or was really lucky with work dovetailing with what I was trying to do). My volume increases 3 weeks running, then drops off, but then increases again to an even higher level. Which is how it should be.

It's all just because of work. Finishing late in the week, and if I have to work a weekend I can't ride. Add in personal stuff (there have been two weekend trips away both with no riding) and it just results in poor results training wise.

BUT what I have been able to do, is a bit more running. I don't like running. It's hard, it hurts, I'm no good at it, and the benefits of it don't translate to cycling at all. Other than general fitness. It's also by far the most dangerous activity for me. If I go dizzy and feel breathless it is when I run. But if it is all you have time for, then it is better than nothing and I just go slow (some people call it zone 2, but I call it 'all I can do' - at least it rhymes). I've also been back on the core exercises, laid on hotel room floors, or office floors, with press ups, sit ups, crunches and various stretches and strengthening stuff. Which I've been doing most days.

I've also launched an 'Event Profs Active' resource on Linked in and Strava ; and it's that sort of thing I think about when I'm travelling with work. Honestly I get so fed up, in the car for hundreds of miles (it isn't usually very practicable for me to take the train) - motorway services, then hotels, in places I don't know very well, with very little time. In places I've got to know a bit better over the years I've found places to run, or hotels with OK gyms, or accessible pools (Manchester isn't too bad for a pool, ICC Birmingham is OK for a pool/gym) - but I sometimes feel like I'm in a constant battle - good diet and routine whilst in the office, then it goes to shit when I'm working away, and I'm just trying to get back in the shape I was for the two weeks after. I might seem like someone who has a degree of discipline, but I'm really compulsive. If I buy a bag if Lemon Sherberts at a services, I'm eating EVERY single one on the car journey. If KFC is the only food option, I'm having chicken gravy and loads of stuff to dip into it. I have the self discipline at the end of a day to exercise, but I don't have the self discipline to eat well all the time when presented with other much more limited options.

Little jog down the Mersey from ACC Liverpool

I don't even go away that much - so for many people it must be even harder. Our industry isn't the healthiest - the food available around many venues isn't great, mostly fast food, Subway, Costa, Wetherspoons type fare - and whilst being onsite means thousands of steps, and hard work - it's mentally taxing, and can be a grind. That little bit of fresh air, and time to reflect can be invaluable.

TBH although I feel awkward talking about physical welfare, the need to be active, and that organisations and facilities should build in the ability for people to be able to stay healthy a bit easier than they do currently, I've got to a point I'm just a bit 'fuck it'. I'm not an ultra preachy type of person - and I KNOW full well how hard it is to put on a pair of trainers, or put on a swim suit and get into a public pool - but we need to talk about welfare more than we do in an encouraging way somehow. I don't know necessarily how, or what trying to do something on it might organically become. Maybe nothing. But I felt I just HAD to try.

I've also launched this 'ridetolive' website on LI, and now I'm back on Facebook (off, on, off, on, I'm so love/hate with that platform) I'll launch there too. Money has started to come in, and that means now I need to book some hotels - sort some staffing - and get arrangements in place. PLUS I need to train. I would say no more excuses, but June looks like it's just going to be work, work, work, and I kind of need it to be. So hmmmmmmm.

So anyway - I'm around for a good couple of weeks now. In the office mostly. If I can stay on top of what I know I need to get done and stop writing blogs - I might get some cycling in. God knows I need to. Actually I'm suposed to be 'racing' at the weekend. Big speech marks around that, because it won't be racing if I do it. I need to ride my bike long more than pedal furiously for 45 mins or whatever the distance is (which won't be far as it is a 'sprint'.....in name only, I mean, as if ;-)). I'll take that decision on Saturday depending what sort of week it has been.

Righto, onwards and upwards. Back to work!